Since the industrial revolution, modern transportation equipment of various types has gradually become part of daily life and rendered daily living more convenient and faster. Automobiles play a major role in transportation equipment, and they serve not just as transportation means and they have been further equipped with facilities such as air conditioning, stereo systems, television sets, satellite navigation, etc. as technologies progress and develop; therefore, the energy for automobiles needs to be converted into electricity to supply the above interior equipment in addition to driving the wheels.
FIG. 1 shows a simplified schematic of the structure of a contemporary four-wheel-drive automobile; the automobile 1 is configured with a driving module 11 (such as motors and engines), a power module 12 (such as generators, batteries, and control circuits thereof), and a transmission module 13 (such as a gearbox, a drive shaft 131, and differentials 132) inside, wherein the driving module 11 is connected with the power module 12 and the transmission module 13, respectively. When the driving module 11 is operating, kinetic energy is generated by the driving module 11 and rotates a plurality of axles 15 of a plurality of wheels 14 via the transmission module 13 so that the automobile 1 is driven by the plurality of wheels 14 to proceed; in addition, the kinetic energy generated by the driving module 11 also drives the power module 12 to generate electricity and store the generated electricity, where the generated electricity may be used to start the automobile 1 and supply the interior equipment and car lighting.
The equipment used to store the electricity in the power module 12 is the batteries; when the user starts the automobile, the batteries instantaneously provide a large current to a starter in the driving module 11 to start the engine, and generator in the power module 12 may be activated to provide the electricity required by the other interior equipment of the automobile after the engine has successfully started; when the electricity generated by the generator exceeds that required by the interior equipment of the automobile, the excess electricity may be stored in the batteries. However, as the functions of interior equipment have become more and more diversified, the required electricity has also mounted. The power of generators for common medium-sized automobiles was approximately 500 W twenty years ago, yet it has risen to 1000 W nowadays; such demonstrates the rising trend in automobile power consumption. The increase of power consumption means more fuel consumption by the automobile (to drive the generator) and more greenhouse gases to be produced, which is detrimental for the environment and ecology; therefore, present industries and governments have been devoting much effort to seek to employ alternative energy sources for automobiles.
Although hybrid electric automobiles and electric automobiles have already been designed presently, they face difficulties in prevalence due to the production cost and charging station deployment. Considering the fact that electricity is always required for starting the automobile equipment be it conventional automobiles, hybrid electric automobiles, or electric automobiles, the present invention has researched, besides the alternative energy resources, in the field of active electricity generation, where the kinetic energy of the automobile during operation is used to generate electricity to enhance the energy utilization efficiency of the automobile and actively generate the energy to be consumed during the driving of the automobile, and thusly achieving the two benefits of generating electricity and saving energy as well. Therefore, the design of an electricity-generating device that may be conveniently installed on the present automobile structure and uses the kinetic energy of the automobile during operation to generate electricity is the crucial topic to be solved in this invention.